French Open: Serena and Sharapova set for Paris showdown

World number one and defending champion eye potential meeting.

PARIS: The two biggest names and highest earners in women’s sport will set off on another collision course when the French Open gets underway at Roland Garros on Sunday.

Serena Williams is a 19-time Grand Slam winner, at 33 still the undisputed queen of tennis and the top seed.

Maria Sharapova has won two out of the last three titles in Paris, including last year, and at 28 is in the prime of her glittering and lucrative career.

Should the seedings hold firm and the American plays the Russian in the final on June 6, however, past experience points to there being only one winner.

Serena has not lost to Sharapova since 2004 and leads the head-to-head by an astounding 17-2, the last of these coming in the Australian Open final at the start of the year.

The outcome was the same in 2013 when the pair met for the first, and to date only time, in the French Open final leaving Sharapova no doubt hoping that someone can do her a huge favour by downing Serena in the early rounds as did Spain’s Garbine Muguruza last year.

Still, Sharapova believes she is hitting form at the right time and fancies her chances on clay, Serena’s least-favourite surface. “I guess the transition I made on the clay courts to become a two-time French Open champion has been a big surprise and really incredible achievement for me,” she said.

An upset early on for Serena is not out of the question as she has been vulnerable in the past on the Paris clay and, after losing her 27-match unbeaten run in the semi-finals of the Madrid Open earlier this month, she subsequently withdrew from the Italian Open with a sore elbow.

The arm injury is getting better, she said, but it is still a concern. “I was worried about it, but lately I have been really getting some really good treatment that has been able to alleviate it and make the symptoms go down substantially. So I feel a lot better going forward in the tournament.”

Serena will have motivation in full as her win in Melbourne was her 19th Grand Slam singles title, just three shy of the Open-era record of 22 set by Steffi Graf.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2015.

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